Have you ever been reading the Word of God and found yourself asking, “What in the world is going on here? What does this even mean?” Or perhaps you have gone through seasons where you doubted God’s rule and goodness over your life and circumstances, constantly crying out, “Lord, why are You allowing this to happen?” or “What good could possibly come from this?” (If I’m being honest, I am currently in such a season of my life.)
Speaking for myself, I know there have been many times when I have thought or acted as though I could do a better job of being God than God Himself—even if I would never admit it outright. We may be tempted to think to ourselves, “If only I were in His position, I would make my life better, make the world a better place, eliminate all disease…” and you can fill in the blanks. The truth, however, is that we neither do nor can see the bigger picture, hence we often make judgments and draw conclusions based solely on our limited human understanding and reasoning.
Now, the goal of this article is not to explain why God allows certain things to happen if He is indeed good, as He says He is (there are many excellent resources that address that question). Rather, my goal is to encourage you, dear reader, to trust in God’s wisdom as He directs your life, even when you cannot understand what He is doing.
His ways are not our ways
You see, God would not be God, if our puny, finite, limited minds could fully comprehend and discern all of His ways. For if your mind could fully grasp Him in His entirety, would He be God in that case, or would you be? In other words, if you can confidently declare that you fully understand God and His ways, then I want to let you know beforehand that that “god” is your own creation—not the God of the Bible, because the finite could never possibly dream of grasping the Infinite.
He declares clearly in His Word that: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways…As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” — Isaiah 55:8-9
“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways…”. God is making a declaration here of the vast difference between human understanding and His Infinite Wisdom. You see He is different from us—because He is God. He does not shares in our human limitations. This is a truth that we tend to miss out on on a daily basis.
The way that we think and try to make sense of things—people who don’t see the bigger picture, is far different from the way that God, who does, thinks and acts. We tend to draw conclusions based on the limited information that we have and our limited capacities to comprehend. This as a result can make God’s Wisdom sometimes feel foolish and just absurd to us—hence the reason for the title. However, God who is all wise and eternal, sees the whole picture: past, present and future and does nothing without a purpose.
Lets take an example that you are likely familiar with. When you were a kid, didn’t your parents keep you from eating all the sweets that you would want to eat? Now why was that? Because they didn’t love you? Of course not! But as kids and with our limited perspectives, that was always our logical conclusion (at least it was mine). As a result we quickly got frustrated and angry at them.
However, I had no idea back then what diabetes was, and I often thought of myself as somehow invincible—like things might happen to others but not to me. But my parents knew better because they had been around much longer than I had. Do you see what I am trying to say?
Now to further illustrate the seemingly “foolish” nature of God’s wisdom, let’s look at some case studies of events in the Bible that best demonstrate this topic.
Case study 1: The walls of Jericho
The inspiration to write this article, comes from my recent reading of the Bible passage that covers the fall of Jericho, as I was reading through the book of Joshua. It is one of those stories that we grew up hearing at Sunday school about the brave Joshua and his army who marched around the walls of Jericho for seven days after which they came crumbling down.
But let me take some time to narrate it in a way that you might have never thought about it before. I want to try to retell this story from the perspective of the army who marched around those great walls with Joshua during that period of seven days. This is how I imagine the story unfolded after I meditated on the passage.
Before you continue, to quickly refresh your memory, I strongly encourage that you take some time to read Joshua 6.
Take note that even though the following narration is based on my imagination of how the story unfolded, it does not deviate from the core text conveyed to us in the Word.
Now before the battle even began, God does something amazing by assuring Joshua of their victory (Joshua 6:2). But the way to this victory (as mentioned in Joshua 6:3-5) would leave readers puzzled and I bet even the Israelites after Joshua explained this to them.
While they were camped outside of this great city which they would soon go to war with, staring at its great walls, I suppose this army came up with plenty tactics as to how to penetrate it. Just then Joshua walks in and tells them: “Those all sound like great ideas and tactics, but neither will we do this nor that, because God has already shown us the way in. He has told us to march around the city for seven days only then will we be able to get through those walls and eventually be victorious”.
*A moment of silence, then the men burst in laughter at the absurdity of the idea.
“Joshua”, one of them might’ve said: “I appreciate your effort in trying to boost the moral of the army, but this is no time for banter and games, please do take this seriously!”.
“I am being serious” he replied, “God has already promised us victory, and this is the path to it that He has laid out for us”.
“What good would singing, screaming and blowing trumpets…what good would sound do to such a massive and thick wall? One that might take us weeks or even months to drill a hole through?” some of the soldiers might’ve replied.
“Hush!” another soldier might’ve replied: “These words are from the LORD! Isn’t He who brought our ancestors out of Israel with a mighty hand capable of such a feat? Have we not just recently seen Him make dry land for us through the Jordan so that we could cross it, as He did for our ancestors through the Red Sea? Is the LORD not God: the Creator of the heavens and the earth? Why then do you doubt? We shall do exactly as He has told us through His servant.”
*All doubts are cleared and everyone is in agreement.
The 7 day march
Day 1: Everyone wakes up excited “Let’s do it!” some might’ve shouted. So they proceed with marching around the city, with the priests blowing their trumpets and carrying the ark of the covenant.
Day 2: They wake up, the excitement is still there, so they proceed in doing the same thing as day 1.
Day 3: They wake up no longer as excited as the first two days, questions and doubts start to arise. “You know what? Let’s get this over with”. Now they get to marching, but this time there is a reluctance to it.
Day 4: Some of them don’t want to wake up but sleep in. “Joshua”, a bunch of them might’ve called out to him: “Are you really sure that this is what God told you to do?”
“It is.” said Joshua “Why do you ask?”.
“Nah no reason…none at all…but please, let us sleep just for ten more minutes and we will proceed with our march.”
Day 5: “Don’t you find this absurd Joshua? We have been marching and marching this long distance and nothing seems to be happening. The guards standing watch above the walls have made a laughing stock out of us. What could we possibly hope to accomplish with such stunts?”
“So what would you have us do?” asked Joshua.
“I don’t know, we have a bunch of ideas in mind of things that we could be doing that would actually help us penetrate this city rather than marching aimlessly and making some noises”.
“Has not the LORD commanded us to do this? Why do you; a mere human challenge His wisdom after having seen all that He has done in the past?”.
“I know but…”.
*They are at a loss of words, and no one dares to speak after that. They proceed to making preparations and going on with their march.
Day 6: “You know what? Only 2 days left, let’s go get this over with, then we can actually start making reasonable plans that will actually bring us tangible results!”
Day 7: “Yes! today is the last day of our march. I cannot wait for this to be over!”
*Joshua walks up to them
Joshua: “So guys, the LORD commanded that on the seventh day—which happens to be today—that we should march around those walls seven times. That’s more than we’ve done on any of the previous days combined, hehe.”.
The masses: “Are you kidding me?”, “Is this guy for real?”, “Uhhghhghhhgh…” — *followed by other expressions of frustration before they proceeded, once again, to march around the fortified city, doing so seven times more than they had on any of the previous days.
On the seventh time around the city, Joshua commanded the men to shout and the Bible says that: “When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city.” — Joshua 6:20.
They must have been perplexed, left in awe or just stunned before charging into the city, or after their battle when this great seemingly impregnable wall collapsed before them. They must have wondered to themselves: “How is this even possible?”, but then get hit by a wave of realization of Who God really is and what He has done and is capable of doing. “Is He not the One who rescued our ancestors from slavery in Egypt with His Mighty Hand?”, “Did He not turn the sea into dry land and allowed them to walk through as He also did for us?”, “Has He ever promised and not fulfilled?”, “Is he not God, the maker of all things? Why then did we doubt?”.
We love logic and having explanations for things, but God’s ways are not bound by mere human logic nor comprehension and therefore cannot always be explained.
You may ask, “What did marching around the city for all those days have to do with anything? Why did it need to be done?” I don’t know, nor can I provide an answer that will fully satisfy you. But this I do know: the God who spoke the heavens and the earth into existence could have easily brought those walls down in an instant.
Yet this is often how we see Him at work throughout His Word and even in the world today. He often chooses not to act directly, but through people and circumstances—especially those that seem unlikely or even impossible. Indeed, the Apostle Paul captured this truth well when he wrote: “But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” — 1 Cor 1:27-29.
Case study 2: Jesus Christ
In the same way what kind of messiah did the Israelites expect back in the day?
To give a bit of context, the Old Testament gives us two images of the coming Messiah, with the first one being as a Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53:1-12) and the second one being as a Conquering King (Daniel 7:13-14). What the Jews failed to see was that He first had to come as the Suffering Servant to bear upon Himself our sins, conquer death and introduce His Kingdom, before He comes as the Conquering King that we see in Revelation, to judge the world and fully bring about His Kingdom here on earth.
The idea of the Conquering King suited most of the Israelites better due the difficulty of the times as they were under Roman oppression. As a result, the image of the Suffering Servant was largely ignored. They expected One who would come in power and drive out the Romans, yet they got One who came in weakness, born in a manger. They expected a King; they got a Servant. They expected a warrior; they received a shepherd, who loved and cared for His own (as He still does today). And because Jesus didn’t meet their expectations of Him, they rejected Him and later crucified Him.
Nevertheless, He was the Redeemer they needed and that the world needs today, because only He has dealt with our universal problem of sin through His death and only in Him do we have the hope of eternal life through His resurrection.
“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” — Isaiah 53:5.
You see other religions view God as this distant being: one that would never associate with us. They consider that the only way that we could have hope and be saved is to work our way to earning His attention and becoming like Him so that we can earn a spot in paradise. This framework of works and merit is present in everyday of our lives: school, our jobs, sports etc.
But only the gospel, presents us with the heart of God: where He, instead of requiring us to do the impossible of working our way to Him or to becoming like Him, came down to our level through Jesus Christ. He lived the perfect life that cannot live and subjected Himself to suffering and ultimately death for our sakes—so that all who believe and put their trust in Him would be saved (John 3:16; Romans 5:8). A salvation that is not based on works nor merit, but by grace to all who believe (Ephesians 2:8-9).
The world considers this gospel foolishness as the Apostle Paul says in 1 Cor 1:18: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing…” But it is through this wisdom, that the world considers foolishness that we are saved—“…but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (see also 1 Cor 1:22-24).
That is why the world cannot accept God’s wisdom, because trying to rationalize it would create more questions and than answers. Rather, such wisdom can only be accepted and received by faith: faith in God and in His Son Jesus Christ (Hebrews 4:2).
Now, these are just two case studies from the Bible that demonstrate God’s power and wisdom, which are both unfathomable and unsearchable, showing us indeed that His thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are His ways our ways.
Trust in God, not in your understanding
Therefore if God is all wise and we are not, then our response should be one of humility, where instead of us trying to tell Him how to do His job, we submit ourselves to His will, seek His guidance, and pray “Lord your will, not mine be done!”.
Let God be God, because even when you can’t make sense of things, He is in control and is orchestrating everything ultimately for your good if you have indeed put your trust in Him.
Let me ask you a question: Can a cup hold all the water in the ocean? Wouldn’t the cup itself be swallowed up if it were thrown into the latter? Indeed, it can hold only as much as it was made to contain. Even if the cup were filled to the point of overflowing, that amount of water could never cover even the surface of the ocean.
In the same way, it does not matter how intelligent or wise you are; your understanding is finite and could never do more than scratch the surface of God’s wisdom. So why, then, do we keep trying to challenge His wisdom in vain?
Let me conclude by saying something that Dr. Timothy Keller—a man whose teachings have changed my life in many ways—said in one of His sermons. He said: “God always gives you what you would have asked for if you knew everything that he knows”, therefore, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. — Proverbs 3:5-6.
Further reading: 1 Cor 1:18-31 & 1 Cor 2:1-16.